Like try to mug someone for their gun, ammo, and possibly more? Great idea, Manda.

"C'mon now, when have I ever done anything like that?"

Jason smiled. It felt weird to do so, considering the circumstances, even if it was only for a brief moment in time. The normalcy he'd longed for just in reach, a light through the pindot at the end of the tunnel. A place where the island didn't exist, where he didn't have to go and deal with a bunch of fellow teens who were all ambivalent on him at the best of times. A time where the only thing he had to deal with was Amanda White and her wetness, and not the fact that to so many other people his name was in red and the friendly fire was off.

But he couldn't go in that direction. The light at the end of that tunnel wasn't the sun. It was a furnace.

However long he'd been smiling, it faded. His head hung between the knees jammed up to his chest as he sat on the dirty bathroom floor. Jason let the silence overwhelm him.

Until he broke it.

"I don't want to die, Manda."

Jason looked back up at his friend. He didn't know what he was expecting from her. A comfort? A lie? An acceptance of the truth, something very similar to what he'd gone through?